Visayas grid on yellow alert anew on Tuesday evening

The Visayas grid will be on yellow alert anew for three hours on Tuesday evening, due to the continued unavailability of major coal plants in the region, while high demand is expected, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) said.

The yellow alert status — indicating that the operating margin is insufficient to meet the transmission grid’s contingency requirement — will be in place from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, June 9.

This comes as the available capacity was reported at 2,644 megawatts (MW), against a peak demand of 2,457 MW, as 890.3 MW remain unavailable to the grid.

The NGCP attributed the declaration to the higher system demand forecast, and the continued forced outages of Therma Visayas Inc. (TVI) 1, which has been out since May 12, 2026; TVI 2 since March 24, 2026; and Panay Energy Development Corp. (PEDC) unit 2 since May 6, 2026.

Six plants have been on forced outage this month, eight since May, one since March, three since 2025, two since 2024, two since 2023, and one since 2021; while 12 are running on derated capacities.

Energy Secretary Sharon Garin already ordered last month the immediate restoration of the three power plants, and instructed the Visayas Field Office to inspect and coordinate with the concerned generation companies to ensure that they are back online “safely and promptly.”

The Department of Energy (DOE) said that while there is no direct correlation between the declaration of yellow and red alerts on electricity rates, the thin power supply forced the use of more expensive diesel power plants, which could slightly raise power costs. —AOL, GMA News